One of the more frustrating quirks of Windows disk management is that the recovery partition is always placed at the end of the drive. This positioning makes it nearly impossible to expand your primary partition without reaching for a third-party utility — all because the recovery partition is sitting in the way.

For most users, this partition goes untouched for the life of the machine. It’s rarely — if ever — needed, yet Microsoft has not included a straightforward way to remove it through the built-in Disk Management utility. Fortunately, it can be deleted using diskpart via Command Prompt or PowerShell.

⚠️ Warning: Deleting the recovery partition is permanent. Make sure you have a Windows recovery USB or backup before proceeding.

Step-by-Step: Delete the Recovery Partition

Open Command Prompt or PowerShell as Administrator and run the following commands one at a time:

diskpart
list disk
select disk #
list partition
select partition #
delete partition override

Replace # with the appropriate disk and partition numbers as shown in the output of each list command. The recovery partition is typically a small partition (450–1000 MB) at the end of the drive.

After Deletion

Once the recovery partition is removed, you can extend your primary partition into the newly freed space using Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) or by continuing in diskpart with:

select volume #
extend